Twisted Firestarter
by ClassicalTorture
Summary: Roadhog did not expect anything to come out of his desire to watch a grenade explode in the sky. He definitely didn't expect a twisted firestarter of a genie.


10 years. Doesn't seem so long in the span of regular things. And yet when one is crammed into a seemingly infinite but so so small **_toosmallletmeoutican'tdothisLETMEOUT_** _!_ Space… 10 years is a lifetime. Especially for one not used to restriction. One who has had their entire life to get used to the freedom of the scorched red clay and the vast plains of the Australian Outback.

He doesn't know how or why he ended up in the spacious **_smalltoosmallcan'tbreathheretoosmall_** prison. Doesn't know who put him here. All he knows that the bright orange peg leg that he had fashioned before his confinement was still with him, but the ache from the torn off limb was gone. He knows that the perpetual rumbling and crackling of the distant and ever present embers enrich his surroundings. They shimmer from beneath the transparent clouds he calls his bed, floor, ceiling and existence. Providing warmth, cushion, nourishment and shackles: all at once.

There's no pain here, there's no hunger, no thirst, desire, relief, or comfort. He can't even remember his name! Not that it had ever stopped him from functioning rather happily before, but back then… back outside… he at least had something to call himself. In here, in the great sunset clouds that are his world, every monicker he bestows on himself is wiped away within a blink.

Entertainment comes easy whenever he remembers he needs it. Great big explosions fashioned from the stray ether he pulls from all around him. Bombs and detonators the likes of which no world has ever seen construct themselves under the nimble fingers of his hands. One: made out of flesh and blood; the other: pale orange mist that flickers with black ambers from within. He still remembered the feeling of joy that these things brought him. It was really about the only sensation, beyond crippling claustrophobia, that was left for him.

Occasionally, his fiery world would shake and shudder, bringing with it the familiar sounds of bombs going off and and a rumbling of oxygen collapsing into itself ass something blew up. But every time he would grin and rush upwards to hopefully glimpse the world outside, start feeling the hope of being free, the sensation would fade, the shuttering of metal against metal would be heard and… A dud. He would be a dud again. And again and again. 10 years worth of sporadic explosions only ever brought on disappointment and the grinding of warped alloys.

Until it changed. There was no roaring this time. No shuddering or shaking. No preemptive sounds of revving engines or screams that would filter, muffled, through the mist and cloud. Just a very sudden flash, bright, so so bright, and warm. Warmer than his clouds, warmer than the sun he barely remembered on his skin. A flashbang grenade. And suddenly…

Burning orange eyes flew wide open in the middle of a magnificent explosion that shuddered and whistled with the intensity of a particularly notorious kettle, gathering the family in for the regulated tea time. In the middle of the starless sky, under no light reflected off of the Moon, as it was hiding as if in shame, what was once a man glanced around for the first time in a decade.

And by the great fires, what a sight it was! Freedom! At last, for real, now and forever! He didn't want to close his eyes. The scorched earth was just as he remembered, the sky, as starless as ever, and the smells of dirt, guzzoline, fine black powder and nitrates permeated the air all around him. There was no ground for him to stand on, there were no more clouds to hold him up. Floating in the great flickering ball of fire, a spirit gazed about in wonder, a grin so wide it looked as if his face could split in two making a home on his mug.

Unbidden, a high-pitched giggle flew off his lips, as the being spread his arms, material and ether, arched his back as if stretching after a very long time, and threw it's head back.

"You won't get rid of me that easily!" screamed he, exploding just like his favorite grenades and raining on the world below in a shower of sparks.

Beneath the joyous sprite, fallen over in shock and disbelief, a biker in an old leather mask wheezed in what felt to him like an asthma attack for the ages as he looked up at the unbelievable sight before him.

"So much for fireworks…" muttered Roadhog, taking a hit of Hogdrogen just in case this was an elaborate hallucination.


End file.
